[allmost]

The Olmecs fascinated me a few decades ago, and still do. i have no doubt the seeds of later civilization in the area would be traced back to them if more was known.
If your labor/culture is based on fighting, killing, enslaving, and sacrificing your neighbors. Even a small amount of ecological shift would destabilize that scenario. A homogeneous culture would leave pockets. This did not happen. Tiered societal rankings, the Earth's natural variations, and an unsustainable social structure. Damn... sounds like today's news...

[SunkenCiv]

Cradle of Chocolate?
by Roger Segelken
October 8, 1998

Digging through history to a time before agriculture, archaeologists from Cornell University and the University of California at Berkeley have found evidence of a village that was continuously occupied from 2000 B.C. to A.D. 1000 as well as hints to the secret of the community's remarkable longevity.

"My guess is, it all comes down to chocolate," says John S. Henderson, professor of anthropology at Cornell and co-director, together with Rosemary Joyce of Berkeley, of the archaeological dig at Puerto Escondido, Honduras. The type of ceremonial pottery uncovered by the archaeologists points to that region of Mesoamerica as a possible "Cradle of Chocolate."